Time flies faster than me slipping on a pickle.

The plans are becoming concrete. We officially leave on a transatlantic cruise on May 4th, 2009. It takes nearly 13 days and stops in the ports of Bermuda, Spain, Portugal and France before reaching England. All places we are happy to revisit with my mom in tow who has never been to any of these places.

From England, we will take my mom to Amsterdam for a long weekend and then she will fly home to Key West and we will fly back to good old favorite London to spend some pub time with our best friends. After London, we will fly to Turkey (Istanbul and from there Cappadoccia) and then on to Moscow where we will take the Trans-Mongolian railway through Siberia and stopping off in small Russian villages and Mongolia before reaching Beijing, China.

From Beijing we will travel to Shanghai to catch a ferry to Japan and then back. After China and Japan, we will travel on to SE Asia including Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and potentially heading all the way down to Singapore where we will catch a flight to Perth, Australia and explore a little of the West coast before settling down in our new home of Melbourne.

We are beyond excited….

In the meantime, we have been working a lot, doing mundane serving work and answering annoying tourist questions. We have been attempting to save every little penny we can get but as of the last few weeks been a little more frivolous than we should be. We have an appointment to begin getting some shots for Asia and have been researching like crazy.

We have actually gone ahead and planned to meet Cory and Lauren in St. Augustine for the Harvest of Hope Fest where we will camp, drink beer, eat veggie dogs, listen to good music, catch up and celebrate my early birthday! This will take place the first weekend of March. We are also trying to fit in a trip to Brooklyn before we depart in May.

In April, we are thrilled that Gena is coming down for a whole month and Ellie’s family are coming for a long weekend and Cory for a weekend.

It’s nuts that all of that is just two months away and that we leave in less than 100 days!!!

In past news, we took part in Rachel and Ian’s wedding in December which was an honor and a really good time. I enjoyed seeing Benji and Lauren and sharing a massive suite with them. Good Luck to Rachel and Ian whom we love sooo soooo much.